Facts

Location

Client

Dublin

National Paediatric Hospital Development Board

Project details

Once complete in 2022, the new 165,000m² children’s hospital and associated Children’s Research and Innovation Centre will be heralded as a world class facility for children and young people from all over Ireland, who have complicated and serious illnesses and are in need of specialist and complex care.

At the heart of our competition-winning concept is an oval ward pavilion, set within one of Europe’s largest roof gardens, that gives the hospital an instantly recognisable and friendly identity.

The introduction of the ‘floating garden’ halfway up the building literally elevates the importance of nature and the therapeutic environment, making it a central part of the architecture’s character, quite unlike any other hospital of this size.

The oval’s form alludes to the architecture of Dublin’s best-known civic spaces and buildings, most notably its Georgian squares as well as the nearby Royal Hospital at Kilmainham (Ireland’s oldest hospital, now the Museum of Modern Art), with which the oval is axially aligned. Once the new hospital is complete, there will be open views from the floating garden and the wards towards Kilmainham and Phoenix Park beyond, creating a strong landscape and architectural axis that will ‘ground’ the new building in its context.

This breathtaking design does its job really well. It’s clear from the open-plan building, the gardens, the sports facilities, and the state-of-the-art wards that this is a unique building.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar

Brief

NPHDB set the intention of creating one of the finest children’s hospitals in the world

design a building that supports the work of clinicians and creates a welcoming environment

Results

the largest, most complex and significant capital investment healthcare project undertaken in Ireland